


The Face of Someone Who Needs You

by escritoireazul



Category: Full House (US)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Growing Up, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Series, Yuletide 2016, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:16:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8919097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: DJ loves Steve, still, and she'll always be grateful for prom, but that doesn't mean they're getting back together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeria/gifts).



“Donna Jo, this room is a mess.”

DJ was halfway crawled under her bed, looking for the tennis shoe that matched the one she wanted to wear. At the sound of Danny’s voice, she snapped up, and slammed her head against the bed frame. 

“Darn it!” she snapped. “That hurt!”

“Honey, are you okay?” Now he sounded concerned.

“I’m fine, Dad. Just a second.” 

There, at the far end of the bed, she saw her shoe crammed under the bottom of the headboard. How in the world had it gotten all the way back there? She couldn’t even blame Comet; he hadn’t hidden anything under the bed since he was a puppy.

She eased her way out from under the bed and scrambled to her feet, clutching the shoe in one hand.

“You’re hurt.” Danny leaned in, gently touched the side of her head. DJ reached up too, and her fingers came away with a small streak of blood.

“I’m not in pain,” she told him, and frowned.

“Think it’s just a scratch.” He touched his thumb to the spot, then smiled down at her. “Do you want me to get you a bandaid? We have some dinosaur ones downstairs.”

“No thanks, I’m good.” She tugged on her shoe without untying it, then straightened her hair and her shirt, both messed up from her little journey under the bed. 

“You used to always want me to make things better for you when you were a little girl,” Danny said. He tilted his head as he watched her, a faraway expression on his face. “You’d beg me to ‘fix it, Daddy. Fix it.’”

DJ laughed even as her cheeks heated. “Well, I’m not that little girl anymore.”

His eyes softened. “No, you’re not. You haven’t been for a long time.” He held open his arms, and automatically, DJ stepped into them for a tight, warm hug. She was going to miss this when she left for Berkeley, far more than she actually wanted to admit to herself.

She let the hug go on for a moment before she pulled back. “Did you come up here just to criticize my organizational skills?” she asked.

Danny frowned. “What organizational skills? DJ, it looks like a tornado went off in here!”

She giggled. “I know, it’s terrible. It’s just easier to go through things if I take them all out at once.”

His frown melted into another expression, a little sad, a little something she couldn’t quite make out. “Getting ready for school?” he asked.

“Yeah. I want to go through every single thing I own and figure out what to do with it.”

He glanced around, taking in the piles of clothes and precariously stacked books. “And that involves all this?”

She rose up on her toes, one hand on his shoulder for balance, and kissed his cheek. “I promise it’ll be back to normal soon.”

His smile was sad. “No it won’t. Not with you gone.”

DJ squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll be here all the time. You won’t even know anything’s changed.”

“Things should change. They have to. That’s a part of life.” He took her hand from his shoulder, squeezed it between both of his. “You’re growing up, and I’m so proud of the young woman you’re becoming.” He stopped, swallowed hard. “Your mother would be proud of you, too.”

DJ blinked against the sudden wash of tears that blurred her vision. “Thanks,” she mumbled. “I wish she could have seen graduation.” And every single day of DJ’s life since her death, but DJ didn’t bother to say that part. She didn’t have to.

“Me too.” They were quiet a moment, just holding on to each other, and then Danny gave a little shake of his head. “Steve’s downstairs.”

DJ jerked. “What? Why didn’t you lead with that?” she asked, but laughter threaded through the words.

“Look at this mess!” Danny cried. “How could I start with anything but that?”

She shook her head. “Okay, point. I promise I’m working on it, I just need to talk to Steve real fast.”

“Take your time.” He squeezed her hands, then let her go. “It’s nice to see you so happy around him again.”

“There was a time you never would have said that,” she told him, mostly to cover the blush she could feel warming her cheeks. She was a mess, she knew, hair flyaway, shirt sweaty from hauling her things around, no make-up. She didn’t bother taking the time to get cleaned up, not even to put on lip gloss. Steve had seen her looking much worse.

Downstairs, she found Steve in the kitchen talking to Stephanie and Michelle and eating cold fried chicken. Not even a little bit of a surprise.

“DJ!” he said when she walked into the room, and beamed at her. There was grease on his fingers and at the corner of his mouth, and his hair was a mess. Still she wanted to kiss him again. “Hey!”

“Hi, Steve.”

He threw away the chicken bone -- he had gnawed it clean, she noticed -- and wiped his fingers on his jeans. “Can we talk?” he asked, gestured toward the back door.

“Oooooooh,” Michelle cried.

“Yeah, right,” Stephanie added, giggling. “Talk.”

“Hush you two!” Her cheeks burned hotter still, but she lifted her chin and walked across the room as if she had never in her life been embarrassed by her little sisters. “Come on, Steve, let’s go outside.”

“Bye Steve!” Michelle said, dragging it out, and her laughter joined Stephanie’s.

Without a word, they made their way to the far side of the yard before they started talking. The fence was a riot of climbing vines and flowers, and the air redolent with their sweet, heavy scent. DJ stopped in the shade of the tallest tree, and turned to face him. He was dappled with sunlight; she still thought him just as hot as she had the very first time she ever saw him.

“What’s up, Steve?” she asked.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, rocked back and forth a little. A smile spread slowly across his face. “I got in,” he said.

That wasn’t at all what she expected. “In where?” she asked, because she was weeks, months, beyond the point where her friends were all waiting for college letters. Then it hit her. “Oh my god, Steve, congratulations! Where?”

His grin widened. “San Jose State! I’m staying around here this fall.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets; his arms hung at his side a moment, and his fingers twitched. “Just like you, Deej. We’ll be nearby.”

Her throat tightened. “San Jose’s pretty far from San Francisco,” she said. From Berkeley, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to point it out quite so bluntly. “Are you moving down there?”

“Yeah. There’s off campus student housing. I’m going to give it a try.” His smile flickered a little, then settled back into place, bright and eager. “Maybe you can come down and visit me.”

“Maybe,” she demurred. 

He reached out for her, but stopped just short of touching her, just left his hands there within her reach; she could touch him, or not, as she chose. “DJ, I.” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Started again. “Deej, I had a great time at prom.”

“Me too. Thank you again for saving the day.” Her smile was easy. Finding him at the door, the knight in shining armor -- or a borrowed tux -- to save her senior prom, was one of the best surprises in her life. She’d had a lot of fun with him that night, and Kimmy and Duane, and all their friends gathered for one last big hurrah before graduation, and the kiss they’d shared made her toes curl.

But she hadn’t expected anything else to come of it after. Now, faced with his fumbling words and deep emotions, she felt ridiculous for not seeing this coming.

“Anytime.” He reached out again, and this time took her hands. She let him hold them. For now. “I’m always going to be here for you, Deej. That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Again, he stopped, and if he was waiting for a response, he was out of luck. She didn’t know what to say. “I still love you. I want to get back together.”

Her heart gave a great lurch. She definitely should have seen this coming.

“Steve.” Her voice was low, her tone gentle. She squeezed his hands. “I still care about you a lot. You’re pretty much the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

His smile dropped. “That sounds good,” he said, “but I can hear the but.” His hands shook against hers.

She raised her eyebrows, nodded a little. “But,” she went on, “I don’t want to date anyone right now. Not when I’m about to start school, move across the bay, leave my family and everything I’ve known.”

“All the more reason for us to get back together!” he cried. “We’re both off to new things, scary things, and together we can get through it. We’re so much better together than we are apart.”

He looked so hopeful, so eager, so in love, that it almost broke her heart to refuse him. “Steve.” For a moment, that was all she could manage. He took it as a good sign, leaned in to kiss her. She kissed him back for a moment, then pulled away. “I’m sorry. I don’t want anything serious, not right now.”

His response wasn’t so much a word as a sigh.

He didn’t pull his hands away from hers, though. She wasn’t sure if that meant he was listening, or if it was just the calm before the storm.

“So this is it?” he asked at last.

She squeezed his hands, threaded their fingers together. “Not necessarily. I don’t want anything serious, and San Jose isn’t as close to Berkeley as you think, but -- we could date, sometimes. I know that’s not what you want, but we could still see each other. Still have fun.”

He was quiet. She waited him out.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

She met his gaze, forced her voice to remain even. “I do. Part of me will always love you. But I don’t want to be your girlfriend right now.”

He pulled his hands away. She let him go. “I love you,” he said, and the sadness in his voice made her ache.

“I know,” she said.

“I need to think about this.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m going to,” he stopped, shifted his weight, looked around. “I’m gonna go.”

“Call me, if you want. Whether or not we date. You’re still my friend.”

He started to say something, stopped. Shook his head. “Bye, DJ.”

“Bye, Steve.”

She stayed right there, watching as he walked away. He didn’t go back through the house, used the outside gate instead. She didn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have wanted to face his family after, either. The wind was gentle, warm, and the scent of the flowers thick and heady.

DJ breathed in. Breathed out. 

Plucked one perfect flower from the vines and carried it inside.

She still had so many more good-byes to go.


End file.
